Wednesday, November 5, 2025

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #254, NOVEMBER 5, 2025.

 

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #254, NOVEMBER 5, 2025.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

Commemorate the End of the Vietnam War. 
Veterans for Peace Reclaims Armistice Day

Art Hobson.  Ukraine Nuclear War Danger is Disturbingly High.
Greg Mello.  Kathryn Bigelow’s New Film on Nuclear War:  A House of Dynamite.

“Commemorate the End of the Vietnam War.”  With Larry Rottmann.   
Nov. 1 to Nov. 12 “Faces from Vietnam”: Exhibition of Photographs at FPL top floor.  Tues. Nov. 11, 5:30, “Voices from Vietnam”: Film and discussion.
Wed., Nov. 12, 6:00, “A Different Vietnam War.”   Narratives of war presented by veterans Larry Rottmann, Tim Burrows, and Eli Redstone.   With live music.

More: Go to faylib.org/events

Veteran of the Vietnam War, Larry Rottman revisited the country 23 times when he took the photos of the exhibition “Faces from Vietnam.”  Another of his achievements is co-editing the excellent Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, co-edited by Jan Barry and Basil Paquet (1972).  (Not in Mullins; try Dickson St. Books.]

 

 

VETERANS FOR PEACE Reclaim Armistice Day 2025

Until Never Again Means Never Again for Anyone

 

 

From Erasure to Resistance
On November 11, 1918, the guns finally fell silent. The “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” marked a global sigh of relief and a promise: War No More. Armistice Day was meant to remind future generations of the cost of empire and the necessity of peace.

In the United States, that meaning was later erased. In 1954 Congress renamed it Veterans Day, shifting the focus from ending war to glorifying it. A day of peace became a billboard for endless wars and the corporations that profit from them. That erasure serves the same interests that erase truth everywhere—from Palestine to our own communities.

Who Benefits from Erasure

The beneficiaries are easy to find. The same weapons manufacturers and security firms arming Israel’s genocide of Palestinians build the surveillance tech used by ICE and police to terrorize immigrants and poor communities here at home. The same billion-dollar prison corporations running detention camps profit from wars and occupations abroad. Militarism overseas and militarism at home are one system. Every drone strike has its mirror image in every ICE raid, no-knock warrant, and act of state violence against Black, Brown, queer, Indigenous, or immigrant lives.

We must resist fascism at home as well as abroad! . . . .

 

 

 

Art Hobson.   “Will the Ukraine War Go Nuclear?  The Danger Is Disturbingly High.”   NWADG 28 October 2025.            

            . . .  In a recent meeting with President Trump, Ukrainian President Zelensky asked for U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles for deep strikes on Russia.  Zelensky came away empty-handed, declining to comment on Tomahawks because the U.S. “doesn’t want escalation.”  

            Trump was right on this crucial decision.  

            Ukraine already has many missile systems including US-made ATACM ballistic missiles, UK/French-made Shadow/SCALP ballistic missiles, Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles, and two kinds of short-range ballistic missiles.  These are supplemented by many types of air defense systems.  The ATACM missiles have a range of nearly 200 miles while the Shadow/SCALP missiles have a range of 155 miles.  These systems are suitable for tactical use near the front lines of fighting in Ukraine.  It’s worth noting that “ballistic” means “thrown, like a ball,” while “cruise” means “air-breathing, like an airplane.”  
            Tomahawk is a cruise missile guided to its target by a GPS terrain-matching system.  With a range of 1500 miles, it is a “strategic” weapon meant to strike at an enemy’s industrial center, rather than a “tactical” or “battleground” weapon.  It’s 500 miles from Kiev to Moscow. Thus, Ukraine could use Tomahawks to attack Moscow and nearby military bases.  This has dreadful implications.   It would raise this conflict to the level of “strategic warfare” between the homelands of Ukraine and Russia, with involvement of the U.S. as supplier of the key new weapons system.  

            I plugged the question “What might Russia do if Moscow or its air base are attacked by Tomahawk missiles from Ukraine” into an on-line search engine and received the following AI response:  “While Russia's specific reaction to a hypothetical attack on its capital and air bases is uncertain, official doctrine indicates that it could involve a range of retaliatory measures, including the potential use of nuclear weapons.”. . . .

            These tactical nuclear weapons exchanges could easily decimate one or more European cities.  Such an all-European nuclear exchange would be difficult to constrain at the “tactical” level of a few kilotons.   Pentagon “war games” research shows that, once the nuclear threshold has been passed, the exchange is highly likely to escalate to all out strategic nuclear war.  See, for example, Annie Jacoben’s well-informed book “Nuclear War:  A scenario.” 

            The first strategic forces used would be Russian and U.S. land-based ICBMs, because these missiles are housed at known locations and could be easily destroyed in a first strike by the other side.  The U.S. has 400 of these, each packing a 300-kiloton nuclear bomb.  Both side’s bomber forces would be immediately airborne.  Both side’s submarine-based nuclear forces would be launched into the ocean depths where they could safely remain until “needed” for further retaliation.  
            Such a nuclear exchange would decimate most of the northern hemisphere.  Although the southern hemisphere might remain largely undamaged, human existence could be permanently reduced to medieval or stone age levels.   
[For the full text see “OMNI Ukraine War Anthology #36” to be published soon.]

 

A House of Dynamite,” the Film: How Real Is It?

By Greg Mello.   Peace and Planet News (Oct. 29, 2025) published by Veterans for Peace.
A new film directed by Kathryn Bigelow is a stark reminder of the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons globally.  
And much more at peaceandplanetnews.org   

 

 

 

 

END OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #254, NOVEMBER 5, 2025.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

No comments: